Here's my thought: For Halloween, several comic creators collaborate to each have a page of their characters dressed as someone else's characters.

My thought in more detail:
Anyone interested in participating would draw their characters dressed as the characters from one other participating comic, display this on their main page on the last week of October (as close to Halloween as their regular schedule is) and provide a link to the comic their characters as dressed from. Mention that another comic has a picture of people dressed as your characters, and encourage the readers to find it. The participating comics would be arranged in a loop so if readers just keep following the links they'll get back to where they started. Or possibly multiple loops if we have plenty of people participating.

I think it would be something fun for both creators and readers, and is a good way to cross-promote our comics to each other.

First I must ask how many people would be interested, and then we'll go from there.
If there's a lot of people who want to participate we would want to randomly assign the comics, but I'm not going to worry about that until I think there is enough to worry about.

UPDATE: A couple ground rules, though they should be apparent.

-The characters in your comic MUST have an established regular appearance. If your characters just wear modern clothes and they change their outfits each day, then how can anyone recognize that someone is dressed as them?

-Post your page in the same place a normal comic page appears, not in your blog or your news. If this is a problem for you, we can work out other solutions, but you need to make sure your readers know that you've made a special Halloween page, and many readers do not read your blurbs.

UPDATE: We've finished picking assignments for this event. If you wanted to join in late, you still can, but I can't promise anything.
Basically, I would send out a message to everyone participating that you would like to join. If anyone is willing to give up the comic they picked so you could do that one, (and they do your comic,) then you can participate. If no one is willing though, then you can't join.

How distinct do my characters need to be? What if my characters just have really unique hairstyles?
There's no exact guideline for this, so you'll have to decide for yourself. I would suggest trying to imagine how your characters would look if they dressed as each other. Would your readers be able to tell both who they are AND who they are dressed as? I don't want to exclude any comics here, but this is just a matter or courtesy to whoever is supposed to dress up their characters as yours.

What is my Halloween page supposed to look like? Is it supposed to be a full and regular comic page?
This is entirely up to you. You could have it be a full comic page, or you could just post some images of your characters dressed up. Whatever works best for the style and theme of your comic. I would recommend a splash page of your characters gathered for a cast party, like Bob and George did for holiday fillers. Your characters can exchange a few entertaining quips so the page feels like more than filler, but you don't have to do as much work as full page.

What day do I need to post this Halloween page on?
We've been stating that you should post it on whatever day you normally update on, (in the last week of October,) and if you post on multiple days then post on the day closest to Halloween. Logically, there is a problem with this because some people will post their page before the ring is complete. Once we have a better idea of who will be participating we'll take a quick poll of what day people will be posting on, so if anyone wants to post their comic on a different day than they normally do, we will know what day would be best.

Where should I place my Halloween comic?
This should appear in the same place as your regular comic, NOT in the blurb or news section. (Not everybody reads those, and part of this is about sharing readers.) If you don't want a filler comic interrupting your regular story, I would simply remind you that you can delete the post after a few weeks to keep your archives clean. Also, you could add the Halloween comic to the bottom of your regular page.
Remember: many people use special sites/apps for reading their comics which do NOT take them to the main page, but the comic's archive page, so they never see your news posts.

But I REALLY don't want to post my Halloween page in the main comic. What else can I do?
How about you extend your regular comic page just a little, and put an extra panel on the bottom where a character directly tells the reader to check out a special Halloween comic in the blog below. Readers won't miss that. For added fun, use a character who has died in your comic. Make him appear as a zombie.
You can later re-upload that page without the extra panel to preserve your archive's continuity.

What if I don't have a regular "blurb" section beneath my individual comic? How do I prompt my readers to find the other participating comics?
Add some text to the comic image itself that prompts the reader to find the other comics. (Have one of your characters talk to the readers if you want!) But please at least have a news section where you can post a link to the next comic.
If you don't have either a news or a blurb section, there are ways to add text into the site itself, so just ask for help if you need it.

What happens if I say that I'm going to participate, but then I don't make my Halloween comic in time?
I have an army of trained rabid squirrels. They will find you. They will bite your knees.

Can I participate if my comic is NSFW?
Yes. We already have a couple NSFW comics participating, and I would really like it if we had enough NSFW and SFW comics that we could separate them into two different rings.
In case we do not get enough comic to separate the NSFW comics, we have a simple rule: Your Halloween comic must be work-safe, and you must provide a work-safe landing page that includes your link to the next comic in the ring. THIS INCLUDES ADS AND OTHER PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. If you cannot provide a safe landing page for readers to see your Halloween page, then you cannot participate unless we get more NSFW comics. (So, contact other NSFW comics and ask them to participate.)
If you are linking to a NSFW comic, when do so, you must state that the comic is NSFW, and that the particular page you are linking to IS safe for work, so if they just want to see the next comic they can do so.

I have other friends who make webcomics. Can I invite them to participate?
Sure! It's an open invitation to all webcomics (so long as they have characters that people can dress up as) and this is not limited to only the webcomic communities where I have posted this message.

How do you intend to divide who dressed up as whose characters?
That will come down to how many participating comics we have. If we have smaller numbers we can just be civil about it and pick amongst ourselves. If we get a lot of people participating then we'll start dividing into separate rings according things like what day they will post and age-appropriateness. If this gets crazy-big then I may have to write a program to randomly assign people to smaller rings.

I want to delete my filler page from the regular archive. When should I do this?
Please keep your Halloween comic visible for at least two weeks, and preferably through all of November. When you do drop it from your archives, please share the Halloween page in the blurb for a nearby page, or in an "extras" section on your site. Remember, some people may be keeping their Halloween page in their regular archives, so someone might be directing their new readers to your site for years to come. It would be nice to extend that same courtesy on some level._________________My webcomic: Mischief in Maytia
http://maytiacomic.com/

Last edited by Marscaleb on Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:29 pm; edited 5 times in total

I know Terry's hair is kind of confusing so if someone wants to dress their character as one of my others, that won't hurt my feelings. (But I'd love to see someone dressed like him if you're willing, haha.)

The loop may be a bit complicated depending on update schedules though. Like if someone posts their update, but the people they're linking to don't have theirs up yet. Some readers may check it out at the right time, but it may be lost to the bulk of them._________________

I totally want to do this, and I have a character that could totally pull of Terry for realz. Halloween is far from my regular schedule but I want to play, and I have an idea on how to make it happen. Could both my webcomics participate?

I sent out some personal requests to a few comics; Modest Medusa will be participating.

Never heard of that Webcomic Underdogs site before; I'll be checking it out shortly.

I want to get everything set up by the 13th (Sunday) so everyone has two weeks to draw their comic. (Though I suspect most of us are used to cutting things closer than that. )_________________My webcomic: Mischief in Maytia
http://maytiacomic.com/

When I posted the event on WU, I decide to add a list of FAQs just to add some clarity. But as it turns out, a couple of these items were brought up by other people, so I've added the FAQs to this thread as well.
(Even though pretty much everybody here is also on that forum.)

I've added it to the first post, you you can just scroll up and take a look if you want._________________My webcomic: Mischief in Maytia
http://maytiacomic.com/

On Saturday, when we have a pretty good fix on who is going to be participating, we'll start picking our assignments. (It doesn't look like we'll have too many, so I would hope we can all be civil about it and just pick assignments for ourselves.)
What I'm asking everyone to do in the meantime though, is to find some good references of what your characters look like. This is just a matter of courtesy so people don't have to spend a lot of time going through someone's archives trying to find an image that isn't just a tosro. You know your own comic, so you know where the good pics are. You may also have nice images on another page or Deviant Art or etc. So when you have some time this week, please copy down the web addresses to pages that show what a character looks like. Good full-body shots of what they wear, detail shots on unique features, etc. Think about not just your main characters but also secondary characters that might be fun to dress someone as. Find as many as you would want if you were trying to draw that character. Copy all these links into a text file or such. (And it would be really nice if your organized them according to what character they show.) Once we pick our assignments you'll send this list to whoever is dressing up as your characters.
Alternatively, if you have good reference pics that you don't have posted online but are willing to send to someone, you could send these (or just ask if they want them, especially if you have a lot.)

ALSO!
If you have a good picture of your whole cast or a few pages that show a lot of your characters, (even if not to full detail,) please send me links to those. Here's why: When it comes time for people to pick what comic to have their characters dressed as, it would be best for people to make some informed decisions. There might be a comic with some characters that would be perfect for your characters, but you've never read that comic before. Before we choose our assignments, I'd like to be able to have some good images for each comic so people know what some of its characters are. If you could find a small selection of images (please no more than three) that showcase a number of your characters (with enough visible to get the idea of what they might be wearing, not just faces,) and please send me these links. When it comes time to pick, I will paste these links next to each comic name so people know what kind of characters each comic has.
Please send me these links before Saturday.
If you're willing to make a quick collage image of several of your characters, that would be fantastic and I can just link to that.

I sent out PMs to everyone to make sure we get a quick response, but just in case my brilliant plan failed, here's what I said:

I've put together the list of all the comics who said they'd like to participate, and it's time for everyone to pick what comic they will have their characters dressed up as.

I don't want to force people to sign up for a forum account to stake their claim, but we DO need a single location to work through this. So I have decided to create a special page on my site so we can just post comments without having to create accounts. It's a bit tacky and unprofessional, I'll admit that, but the alternative is to build a whole new site. I have changed my comment settings so all comments will get automatically approved; hopefully the spam filters will hold up.

The page has a list of all the participating comics; just post a comment to state which comic you'd like to dress your characters as. Details are on the page itself.

IMPORTANT UPDATE FOUR:
We've finished picking assignments for this event. If you wanted to join in late, you still can, but I can't promise anything.
Basically, I would send out a message to everyone participating that you would like to join. If anyone is willing to give up the comic they picked so you could do that one, (and they do your comic,) then you can participate. If no one is willing though, then you can't join.